Product Operations (Product Ops) is a growing role focused on connecting different parts of product teams and optimizing processes. It can involve managing customer insights, communicating with other teams, supporting products, and analyzing the product experience. While definitions vary, common goals include making processes more consistent, centralizing information, and aligning efforts with strategy. Some challenges include teams prioritizing features over users and siloed tools/information. High performing companies focus on first principles and scale what works instead of fixing problems at large scale. Today's panel will discuss challenges and opportunities in Product Ops at their companies.

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Paths and Perspectives
What is
Product Ops?
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3. 1. Today: What is ProductOps? Paths & Perspectives
2. October 22nd: The Role of Product Ops: A Case Study
from Pivotal Software
3. November 19th: Getting Started with ProductOps
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Product Ops Webinar Series

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Agenda
1. Introduce the panel
2. Quick overview (John)
3. Panel Discussion:
● Why now?
● What are you doing about it today?
● Theme: Scaling
● Theme: The Glue
● Next steps for the audience
4. Live Q&A
Submit questions at any time during
the webinar!

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Today’s Panel
John Cutler
Product
Evangelist,
Amplitude
Megan Gleason
Director of
Product, Auth0
Keith
Nottonson
Sr. Director of
Development,
Optimizely
Bukky Adebayo
Product Manager,
Microsoft
Aloka
Penmetcha
Director of Product
Management,
Pivotal Software

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Do you have a person on staff with
Product Operations in their title?
Poll 1

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No One Definition—Many Overlaps.
coordinate
connect
synthesize
communicate
integrate
oversee
optimize
aggregate
intermediate
manage
support
analyze
make consistent
operationalize
align
● manage the product development system as a product
● aggregate and synthesize customer insights
● communicate product changes, coordinate with product marketing and sales
● an intermediary between front-line support and Engineering
● manage vendors
● support the product team
● coordinate the key aspects of the launch
● analyze the product experience globally
● build the connective tissue between product/engineering & user facing teams
● operationalize products
● free the teams from (some of) the operational burden of supporting products
● communicate strategy to all levels of the organization
● align the efforts of teams with the core strategy
● optimize the product development process, improve efficiency
● sharing best practices, converging on “one way”
Variety of responsibilities between organizations...Common keywords
“consistency,
centralization”

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Some worrisome findings...
❏ Product manager led, not product-led
❏ “We’re just a more effective feature factory now…”
❏ Front-line ICs distanced from customers and users (and internal stakeholders)
❏ Circumventing design, UX Research, service design
❏ Information and tool silos, the “tool owners” / buyers / operators
❏ Not operationalizing/scaling what “works”, scaling up not out
❏ Institutionalizing intermediaries, handoffs, “The Waterfall”
❏ Unhelpful consistency, unhelpful process conformance
“Best” in the world are taking a first-principles approach (not cargo culting). May not have
“Product Ops” role. Are scaling something that is (mostly) working, instead of trying to fix
something “at scale”. Resilient and healthy environments. Step change in terms of efficacy.

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Today: focusing on the challenges and
opportunities across four companies...

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Questions for the panel
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In your organization,
“product team” refers to….
Poll 2

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Live Q & A

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